Taking Action

My toes are inching forward toward the edge of the precipice. I am scared of heights, so my chest is tight and I am fighting my body's natural urge to freeze. In order to preserve my own life, I have to move forward.I am on the cusp of entering the unknown. I wish I could sneak a peek at it. A window into the future that would reassure me that I am taking the right steps. A good portion of my reluctance, however; comes from the inability to trust myself, yet I recognise there is nothing left for me in the past except deafening alarm bells signalling continued rejection and neglect.Change is inevitable. I should welcome it, embrace it even, but the process of becoming different is painful. I can only hope that one day I will be able to look at my scars, and tenderly recall how I survived.With this agonizing experience as my starting point, I have nowhere to go but up. I must take a leap of faith.

I know how you feel and the best advise I can give is to take care of yourself first and PREPARE before taking that leap. Good preparation will allow you the best chance of a safe landing. If you have done the proper preparation, you should be able to take the "leap" with confidence. If you need more time to prepare - that's okay - make your own timeline that best suites your situation. The fact that you seem unsure about taking the leap now may be your inner voice warning you that more preparation is needed. Approach the edge with confidence and you will know that you are indeed prepared.

Have you ever read a story in here that said - - "I got out of my shithole marriage and now I wish to hell I was back in it ?" -

Me neither.

There is often a connotation that a leap into the "unknown" carries with it dark negative outcomes". It ain't so. That's why it is termed "unknown".

On the balance of anecdotal evidence on these very pages, I cannot find one where the "unknown" proved to be dark and / or negative. Quite the reverse actually.

Truly, I don't think you are taking on a high risk venture at all. I think your outcome will be like all the rest of those who have left dysfunctional shitholes. Ain't seen a one that wants to return to the shithole (and I've seen a LOT of stories here over the past 4 years)

Hey Baz, I appreciate you are trying to reassure me that leaving will have a good outcome. I want to believe this is true.I don't think of a leap of faith as having as a negative connotation. I feel I am finally ready to admit that there is nothing left for me to do, but to move on. Moving on (into the unknown), however, is scary to me and sure to be difficult. Why do I think it will be hard? Even though I have an escape plan, it is what it is, a plan that I hope to execute even though I haven't completed everything on it's checklist to carry it out effectively. In the short amount of time that I have come to this decision to separate, I haven't been able to save any money (the money that I had saved I used to pay for the lawyer's consultation fee). I don't know if I'll be able to afford to stay in my home, or if I'll have to uproot my three young children. This is all very unsettling; not knowing where you are going to live or how you are going to feed your kids.I have no doubts that our marriage is dysfunctional, I can see that now. This is why I am not willing to stay. I have weighed the risks, and I do believe it is more hazardous to remain.No matter how much I've suffered though, I don't want to think of my SM as a "shithole." I'd rather use it as a learning experience, which will propel me forward. A friend sent me a post today: "Don't carry your mistakes with you, their weight may crush you. Put them under you, and use them as stepping stones to your future."Thanks again for your comments...Treading onward and upward :)UJ

i can not like that enough, unfortunately I can't "like" a reply. I think everything happens for a reason, no matter how painful it is. y'know? and if it wasn't for my kidz and the ppl i've met along the way, I WOULD regret my marriage. it was a mistake. totally but through the pain i've developed more as a person. I still have a ways to go since i won't divorce until the kidz get older. but it is a very painful learning experience at that.

Baz, I think the reason we never read about someone ruing leaving is because most people play conservative. Earlier you talked about the 8 out of 10 (or thereabouts) that disappear from ILIASM never to return. I think many of them realize they will rue leaving, so they don't.

Of the members who HAVE left, and we KNOW they have left, I have not seen a one that wished to be back in the dysfunctional situation. Of these ones where we don't know what happened, well obviously we don't know. Your theory about them could be right, could be woefully wrong. We don't know.

What we DO know, from the ongoing ILIASM members, is that most do NOT leave, no matter how lamentable a picture they paint of their marriage. So about these "unknowns", I'd speculate that they'd be the same. 'Most' of them probably stay. It is pretty hard to "rue" in advance of a theoretical action never taken. The context of "rue" is usually in a circumstance where one did something, then wished they hadn't.I suspect that most of these "stayers" do their "rue-ing" when they realise how many years they've pissed up against the wall in their dyfunctional unions - but that is also pure speculation on my part. We don't know.

I don't think characterizing most of the marriages described here as "shitholes" is helpful to readers on this board. It's over the top, and condescending in tone; most of us would know enough to step out of a solid hole of ****, if such were in fact our living conditions. IMO it's the mix of good and bad that keeps people in place, not cowardice or stupidity.

Hi Baz... so over a year later I can finally admit that my marriage was a shithole, but it was still a learning experience. Lesson #1 - I never want to be in another shithole! LolThanks for telling it like it is.

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